


The Second Law: Isolated System

by Lilsciencequeen



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, spec fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 10:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13545762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilsciencequeen/pseuds/Lilsciencequeen
Summary: When they hit the twenty third loop, they were starting to realise what was happening. They were retaining more and more memories of the previous loops, of their previous attempts, their previous failures.Enoch confirmed this to them, after the two scientists had confronted him about it. Jemma had complied document after document, evidence that they were trapped in a time loop, doomed to repeat it again and again and again until they managed to break out of it.// A fic exploring the time loop theory.





	The Second Law: Isolated System

**Author's Note:**

> So I know Jemma dies in this, but she doesn't die permanently, its just a temporary death to do with the theory mentioned previously in canon but she's all okay, worry not.
> 
> Also the time loop comes from me thinking this is what's gonna happen in canon. Maybe, who knows with time travel.

_Loop One_

The first time she dies, it’s a shock to him. He’s not expecting it. The prophecy, nothing they were ever told spoke of her death.

It was a bullet to the gut that claimed her, during a Renewal, in the early days of the Kree having taken over the Lighthouse, and he had been there, he had held her as she lay dying, bleeding out in his arms.

It was one of the worst things ever; her blood running heavy and warm across his fingers, her breath catching in her throat as she started to choke but still, the last words that she uttered were words of reassurance, words of kindness and love and hope, the final words that could only belong to someone like Jemma.

“You’re going to be okay,” she breathed. “You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m not,” he told her. “I’m not going to be okay. How can I be? Without you.”

She seemed like she was trying to laugh, but she ended up choking, coughing, blood running down her chin and her eyes fluttered shut. “You’re a genius, Fitz, you’ll figure it out.”

A pause, and then, words that were barely audible. “I love you.”

And with that, she faded away, her breath stilling and the bleeding now slowing and stopping as her heart also did so. She was gone, and he knew it, and the tears that he had been holding back started to fall.

It wasn’t until hours later that he, eventually, reluctantly left her, May leading him away from Jemma as some of the others took her away

 

_Loop Two_

Waking up in the base, the base where the Monolith had sent them back to, was a surprise and he saw that Jemma was lying there only a few feet from where he lay, mumbling slightly as she came to.

She was alive, and she was here and she was breathing and she was sitting up.

“Jemma,” he asked, the word nothing more than a breath as he stared at her.

She was sitting up now, blinking a number of times as she took him in. “Fitz? What happened?”

“We’re back in the Lighthouse,” he told her, standing up somewhat unsteady on his feet, but still helping her up at the same time. She accepted his hand, not even thinking about it. They looked around the room, watching as the rest of their team came around, all of them groaning and grumbling as they did so.

“But what year?”

“2017.” They both turned when they saw Enoch standing there, his lips flicked up in a smile. “We’re back to where we began last time.”

“Last time?” Fitz asked, but that provided no answer as Enoch was already walking off. The last thing that he remembered was holding her hand as the Monolith activated, hopefully taking them back to the place where this had all begun, the end of the world, and the words Enoch had muttered, about being where they had began last time made no sense, but he didn’t dwell on it as his attention was focused on Jemma once more.

“We did it,” she whispered, turning to face him and smiling up at him. “We’re back home.”

“And we’re gonna save the world.” He smiled down at her, tilting his head down as she cupped his cheek. He slid his hands around her waist, pulling her close as their lips danced across each other’s.

But they didn’t save the world, and in this loop, Jemma still died.

 

_Loop Twelve_

By the time they had repeated the cycle a dozen times, Fitz started to remember fragments of the previous attempts. They came to him in a dream, fragments of another life, memories of all the times before.

But to be honest, they were more like nightmares. All of which ended in Jemma’s death, with her lying bleeding and him hopeless to stop it.

He woke up screaming each night, but Jemma was there for him, resting a reassuring hand on his shoulder, telling him that it would all be okay, that it would all be alright.

That they would save the Earth, that they would stop it from ending.

And every night, he smiled at her, then kissed her gently on her forehead, thanking her for being there for him, because he wouldn’t know what to do without her.

“You’ll never have to find out,” she whispered, leaning closer to him, her lips meeting his and a kiss occurring between the two of them.

But he did.

He did find out what life was like without her.

It was a number of years after the world had ended, and a number of months after the Kree had taken control of the base. They had asked for him, wanting him to develop a weapon, something to control humanity, something to keep them ordered and civil and peaceful, something that could hurt them, kill them, cause them pain if they disobeyed.

He refused, shaking his head.

He wasn’t going to create anything like that. Not again. The Framework may have been nearly a decade ago now, but it still lingered, fragments on his darkest days.

The Kree didn’t take kindly to his words, and in order to get him to comply, they hurt Jemma, impaled her with one of their spears. He had held her as she bled out, hoping that he could provide some comfort to her in her last moments.

She had been terrified, in pain, so unsure of what was happening, and he couldn’t do anything to stop the bleeding and she had died in his arms, in great pain.

It was then he gave up, he lost hope at ever creating Robin’s time machine. What was the point? Jemma was gone, and it was her hope that had kept him going.

So in the end, he had joined Elena in her fight against the Kree, not knowing if it would kill him or not, and not really caring either.

 

_Loop Twenty Three_

When they hit the twenty third loop, they were starting to realise what was happening. They were retaining more and more memories of the previous loops, of their previous attempts, their previous _failures_.

Enoch confirmed this to them, after the two scientists had confronted him about it. Jemma had complied document after document, evidence that they were trapped in a time loop, doomed to repeat it again and again and again until they managed to break out of it.

“How?” Fitz shouted, getting angry because if Enoch was right, then it meant that he had witnessed Jemma’s death twenty-two times so far, and each time he had failed to save her, he had let her down.

“It’s okay,” she told him, her hand resting on his shoulder. “We’re going to work this out.”

“How?” he asked, his voice strained, and Jemma could tell just how much pain that he was in at this point. How much pressure he was putting on himself. “How can we work this out? How can I live knowing that you’ve died all these times and I’ve failed… that I couldn’t save you?”

“I’m still here Fitz,” she whispered, bringing her head closer to his, resting the side of it against his. “I’m still alive, and we’re going to break this loop, we’re going to work this out, like we do everything…” She trailed off, knowing that he would know the word that she was looking for and he did, saying it after he took a breath, trying to calm himself.

“Together.”

 

_Loop Thirty_

“She predicted your death!” The words left Fitz as nothing more than a pant and he was staring at her, at his wife. “We worked out everything! We’ve tried everything and she’s still… she’s still saying that you die. Not in the field, not in an accident but in childbirth! I can’t do anything to save you Jemma!”

She started at him, blinking a number of times. “Fitz,” she breathed, stepping closer to her husband. “Did Robin tell you?”

He nodded, tears clinging to his lashes, threatening to fall and make tracks down his face. “I can’t… I tried Jemma and no matter how hard I try, you always die and I can’t… I can’t keep losing you.”

“Then the loop will reset Fitz, it will and we can work it out the next time, save the world next time…”

“What if you don’t?” he asked, stepping closer, the anger fading from him, his voice breaking. “What if I don’t save you, next time or the time after that, or the time after that and time continues and we don’t get another chance at this? What if you die and the loop… the loop doesn’t reset?”

“Then maybe,” Jemma tried, reaching out to him and taking one of his hands in her own, rubbing her thumb over the back of it. Her words were tentative, nervous, as if she were unsure. “Then maybe I’m meant to die, maybe I’m not…”

“No.”

The word was short, sharp and blunt from Fitz. He was shaking his head, refusing to believe her words. “You can’t die…” He trailed off, trying to find the words, but unable to find them. His was angry and heartbroken, furious and devastated at the same time.

“Fitz… Maybe, maybe you have…” She shook her head, fighting tears back herself. “Maybe we have to accept that, accept the fact that I die. Maybe I’m not supposed to grow old with you.” The words were hard for her to say, a possibility that she didn’t want to consider.

“How am I supposed to move on?” his voice was strained as he whispered the question.  “How am I supposed to accept that I lose you, that you die and I….”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, tears now making tracks down her face. “I don’t know Fitz.”

He shook his head, pulling his hand out of hers and leaving the room, leaving Jemma standing there alone, her arms curled protectively around her bump.

 

_Loop Thirty Nine_

“You’re alive?” he whispered as she walked, well limped, into their room. He was by her side immediately, supporting her weight as she leaned heavily into him. “You were supposed to die, you heard Robin, you…”

“I have no idea,” she told her, her voice coming through gritted teeth. She allowed him to lead her to the bed, and helped her sit down before crouching down and examining the wound. It was deep and bloody, painful but not life threatening. “But it means we can do this, that we can change time.”

He nodded, not really focusing on that at this point in time, before standing up and crossing the room, grabbing the first aid kit and heading back to her. Crouching down, he began to clean the wound, Jemma wincing gently as he disinfected it, apologising as he did so. It was then he knew what he had to do next, and he looked up, meeting her eyes. “This is gonna hurt,” he whispered, his tone apologetic, not wanting to cause her more pan that she was already in.

“It’s okay,” she reassured him, but it still didn’t stop the whimper of pain that she gave as he began to stitch her wound. It wasn’t long after that though that the wound was stitched and bandaged. She adjusted herself in the bed, curling up in it. Fitz came to lie next to her, and she moved her head once again, resting it on his chest.

“You should change those trousers,” he told her, the words whispered into her hair, the bloodies fabric catching his eye.

“I should,” she replied, but made no effort to move, instead she snuggled in closer to him. “We can do this.” The four words came after a moment of pause and she felt his breath against her ear as he spoke.

“We can,” he told her. “We can do this.”

“I thought you didn’t think we could change time.” There was a hint of teasing in her tone and he just laughed, placing another kiss to her forehead.

And he had, but seeing this today, seeing Jemma alive when she was predicted to die, holding her when he shouldn’t be, maybe that was the proof they could do this, the proof that they could change time. “Maybe we can, maybe we have another chance at this loop, at stopping the world ending.”

“We do…” she told him, but then a yawn escaped her. The mission she had been on was long, nearly a week and she was finally back. And now that she was in his embrace, she wanted nothing more than to sleep.

He reached for the blankets, pulling them up over the both of them. “You can sleep,” he told her, wrapping his arm around her, trying to pull her closer. “And we can work out what happens next tomorrow.”

But Jemma never replied, for sleep had already claimed her.

 

_Loop Forty Seven_

“So I think we’ve fucked up this timeline,” Fitz told her, flashing a grin as she turned to face him, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, the left side of her face swollen, bruised and bloodied from where one of the Kree had hit her with a weapon before he had managed to kill them.

“You can say that again,” she told him, checking the ammo in her gun once more. She knew that they didn’t have long until the Kree, until Kasius’ goons figured out where they were. They had been hiding, running for a number of weeks now but Jemma knew they didn’t have long left.

After the world had been destroyed, cracking into hundreds of pieces and the Kree had taken control of the Lighthouse, the two scientists had worked out that this wasn’t the loop in which the world was going to be saved, the loop in which they would succeed, and had helped Elena in leading the Resistance. The Inhuman had vanished weeks ago, and they feared the worst, but they knew that they would get another shot at this, another chance to save the world. So they had taken control of the Resistance, fighting the Kree and giving the humans a chance to gain a better life.

“Are you ready?” she asked him, passing him over a spare set of ammo that she had, Fitz accepting it with a word of thanks. She cast a glance over the overturned metal table they were hiding behind, at the door that was threatening to break down across the room.

He didn’t reply for a moment, just took her in. He knew that they weren’t going to survive this, that they Kree were going to kill them. He leaned over, kissing her for what might be the last time. They savoured the moment, making it last as long as possible. The two of them didn’t pull apart until the heard the awful sound of metal buckling and bending, and a smashing sound, the door now having come off its hinges.

“Ready to face what comes next?” Jemma asked again, her voice wavering slightly this time.

Fitz nodded. “Together.”

And in sync, the two scientists rose, ready to face what was on the other side of the table.

Together.

 

_Loop Sixty_

They were working out what was needed to be done.

How to save the world.

They still weren’t there; not yet anyway. The world was still ending.

But they were trying all variables, trying to work out what the best path was to save the world.

And Jemma.

She was still dying in some time lines, some of the loops, but she was surviving in more and more of them, working with Fitz, her husband, trying to find the series of events that would lead to them escaping the time loop, to the correct time line

However, not in this loop. In this loop she was once again dying, bleeding out from a bullet wound to the gut once again.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Fitz whispered to her, not meaning to chastise her, and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“I couldn’t… I couldn’t let you…” she was breathing heavily as the sticky heavy liquid flowed over his fingers as he tried to stem the bleeding. “I couldn’t let you die.”

He shook his head, tears dripping down his face. “You… I won’t…”

“You’ve done this before for me Fitz, please…” her breath caught in her throat, and her eyes fluttered shut, and he knew that she didn’t have long left, that she would soon be dead. “I’ll see you again.”

“I know,” he whispered, knowing that it was true, but still crying, still holding her close, still continuing to press his hands against her wound. He wanted to provide her comfort, hold her in her last moments. “I love you.”

A half-smile from Jemma and a confession of love, and then she was gone.

 

_Loop Eighty Four_

“Come on,” he whispered, holding Jemma’s hand tight, fighting the nerves as he watched Daisy on the screen. They were on their eighty fourth loop, their previous eighty-three attempts at saving the wold having failed and he was slowly giving up hope, sure that they couldn’t do anything to stop the world. That they were destined to repeat this loop forever.

But Jemma wasn’t. She was still determined that they could do it, that they could end this cycle. So he kept fighting for her.

She was standing beside him, squeezing his hand almost. Her attention never once left the screen, watching as Daisy entered the building, the one where the Gravitonium was, the true cause of the world ending. A nervous energy radiated off her, and they knew it would be an hour before they learnt whether or not Daisy was successful.

The previous eighty-three times, Daisy had never walked out of that building, so when she did after the hour, it was somewhat of a surprise. Fitz couldn’t help but stare at the screen in wonder, his mouth agape as a battered and bloodied Daisy gave a thumbs up to the security camera.

“She did it,” Jemma breathed. “She did it.”

Fitz nodded, unable to believe it. She had done it, they had done it. They had saved the world, stopped it from cracking apart.

The world wasn’t going to end.

Not this time.

They were about to escape the loops, continue on with the timeline as normal, and most importantly to Fitz; he wasn’t going to have to watch Jemma die. Not again.

And unable to help himself, Fitz cupped her face, leaned down and kissed her.

 

_2019_

He couldn’t help but cry as he watched Jemma come down the aisle with her father, wearing a dress of simple lace, her hair pinned up.

She smiled at him as she took her place in front of him, her eyes twinkling as he pushed the veil back from her face. “Hi,” she whispered, and his smile grew even larger.

“You’re beautiful,” he told her, taking her hands in his own.

“Your gonna make me cry.”

He shrugged. “It’s the truth.”

And as the wedding progressed, tears started to come from everyone in the room, even May and Hunter (who had been adamant that he wouldn’t cry).

“Jemma,” Fitz began, trying to think of his vows but unable to remember them. “I had vows prepared, words upon words saying how much you mean to me, how much I love you but I’ve forgotten them, but who cares. I can tell you again later, just like with my engagement speech, but Jemma, I love you more than words can say, and getting to say that in front of our friends, and family, it’s amazing. I can’t… I can’t think of a single thing I want to say except I love you and never want to spend another day without you.”

“Fitz,” Jemma breathed, starting her own vows. “Being here with you, I never thought that it would happen, that we could get this, a happy ending, a life together, but I knew from the moment we became friends, from that very first day, there was no one else I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, no one else who I would rather… I love you Fitz, I love you so much and I’m glad that I can call you my husband, the man I love but I love that you’re my best friend, that I can spend the rest of my life with my best friend.”

And when the couple where pronounced man and wife, they didn’t even have to be told that they could kiss each other.

_2021_

“She’s so tiny,” Fitz whispered, holding his new born close to him, terrified that he would make one wrong move that could hurt her.

“She is,” Jemma whispered, reaching over and using a finger to caress her daughter’s cheek, Peggy babbling in her father’s arms. Jemma couldn’t help but laugh at this, all thoughts of exhaustion gone. Her hair was still plastered to her forehead with sweat and her body still ached, but she was here with her husband and her daughter, things that she didn’t think was possible.

“She’s beautiful,” he continued, still awestruck. “I didn’t… I didn’t think that it was possible to love someone as much as I love her.”

“I know, I just… I just hope she has a good life, that she’s safe, that we’re good parents.”

Fitz pulled his eyes away from his daughter, and looked at his wife, leaning over and placing a kiss on her temple. “You’re going to be an amazing mother.”

“You think so?”

He nodded, passing Peggy back over to Jemma when she started to cry, already wanting another feed. Jemma began to nurse her. “I _know_ so.”

_2026_

The door to Jemma’s ward flung open and Peggy came bounding in, a helium balloon trailing behind her and a gift bag banging against her waist.

It was Fitz who closed the door after her, shaking his head and laughing as he watched his eldest daughter climb up on the bed, Jemma shuffling over so that there was room for her. Skye was awake in her arms now, her tiny hands folded into fists as a yawn escaped her.

“How are you?” he asked, sitting beside his wife on the other side, wrapping an arm around her and allowing her to settle in against him.

“Better,” she whispered, leaning in close to him. It had been a number of days now since Skye had been born, but she was still in hospital, still under observation. “How’s the other monkey.”

Peggy took his as cue to beam at her mother, smiling a gappy smile, her two front teeth still missing after they had fallen out the other day. “I got you this.” She passed the bag over and dropped the weight of the balloon on the ground. The balloon itself bounced and spun in the air a number of times before settling.

Jemma passed Skye over to Fitz and opened the bag, looking at the contents inside. A new onesie and a stuffed elephant. “I buyed it with my own money,” the girl said proudly, and Jemma couldn’t help the tears that began to cling to her lashes once again.

“Skye will love it,” she whispered, leaning over and pressing a kiss to her daughter’s head, after brushing away some unruly curls. “Do you want to hold her?”

The girl’s blue eyes widened. “Can I?”

Jemma nodded, and Fitz leaned forward, ready to pass Skye over as Jemma explained how to hold her and moments later, Peggy was holding her younger sister in her arms.

“She’s so tiny,” she whispered, unable to believe it.

“She is,” Fitz commented. “And you’re going to be the best older sister that anyone can have.”

And as this conversation continued to play out, Jemma allowed herself to zone out for a moment and take in what was happening. There were still some days she was unable to believe that this was all happening, that she was lucky enough to get this happy ending, but she had and she wouldn’t change it for anything.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading, I really hope that you enjoyed this one! Shout out if you can guess what the title makes reference to!


End file.
